Collection: POACHER’S PANTRY- CANBERRA, ACT

- A FEW WORDS FROM THE MAKER -

Our small family business started over 28 years ago, has been built around our love of good food and sharing with family and friends. From simple beginnings as an artisan smokehouse, we have grown to include the Smokehouse Restaurant, the Wily Trout Vineyard, farm shop, cellar door, country wedding and event destination.

As a family business we are driven by an enduring passion for our region that now has the fourth generation growing up on the farm and playing in the gardens. But it is the brilliant group of people that are on our team, that make Poachers Pantry and the Wily Trout Vineyard an exceptional operation.

Poachers Pantry is located on land that was traditionally owned by the Ngunnawal tribe, the first European to settle here was in 1850 by a Major Johnston, a member of the Rum Corp. He built a slab homestead around 1870 and then the woolshed about 1895. He regularly mortgaged and remortgaged the property due to gambling debts and sold the farm in 1919 to the Mundy family. They built the current homestead in 1920 and ran a grazing operation. The farm then changed hands in 1959 to the Kelly family who build the 70 acre dam with the plan for a dairy farm to supply Canberra’s growing population.

Rob’s father, John Bruce, bought the farm that is now home to Poachers Pantry in 1973. The magnificent Golden Elm the centre piece of the Homestead lawn was planted in 1975 and we moved here nine years later so that Rob could manage the family’s grazing operations both here and in the ACT.